Today we made ourselves an advent calendar!!
I got the idea from Filth Wizardry, and posted about it in my Christmas Ideas post a few days ago.
Preparation:
-On Saturday, Talia & I went to a local restaurant supply store and picked up some plastic shot glasses.
-Over the last couple of days, we've been making paper snowflakes.
Process:
1. I cut a piece of tinfoil for Talia to wrap around a piece of cardboard.
2. Together, we taped it onto the back
3. I cut a piece of blue construction paper, Talia covered one side with glue, I stuck it to our shiny board.
4. We decorated with some of our previously made paper snowflakes (we took turns gluing- she was getting tired of it, but wanted to direct my placement ;).
5. I glue gunned the cups to the paper
6. We took some computer time and we decided who she wanted to make Christmas cards for this year. I told her how to spell their names, she typed them out. We printed the page, I cut the names out. She folded the names & put them in the cups.
7. We got a chocolate advent calendar and had fun opening all of the doors in one shot, to get the chocolates out and put them in our own calendar :)
8. While she napped, I stamped the tissue paper with numbers and glued it onto the tops of the cups, so that she could break the tissue paper with her finger and get out the candy and the name each day of December.
(The plan is to make one Christmas card each day, so that she doesn't get sick of making a bunch in a row.)
Alternatives:
I also thought of putting a paper in each cup listing the activity for the day, but I can guess that we'll end up switching things around, so for us, that wasn't the best choice :)
I have seen this idea used as a way to put left over Hallowe'en candy to use as well. You can use it for the month of November if you're doing that, or make a giant one that goes from Hallowe'en to Christmas!
What a beautiful idea. This blog is great Heather. You seem like you're having so much fun!
ReplyDeleteI love this project Heather! I am totally going to do this too!!! And I agree with Kim - what a great blog!!! I had no idea you were doing this regularly - I will be checking in more often!!! :)
ReplyDeleteThanks Kim & Eujean! :)
ReplyDeleteI'm having a lot of fun with it! (And so is Talia ;)
So we did this today because I just loved it, and I happened to buy a bunch of plastic shot glasses at the dollar store this summer because I thought they were so cute, but I wasn't sure what to do with them. I won't be posting pictures because mine didn't exactly end up looking like yours >:-/ What kind of glue did you use to adhere the tissue? And how did you make them look so perfect? The fact that I had two 10-year-old "helpers" on top of my own kids probably didn't help matters any :)They'll be tasty nonetheless! Thanks for the inspiration!
ReplyDeleteI used wet white glue (whatever that's really called) that I got at the dollar store. And I did that part by myself while the girls were napping- it was pretty fiddly & took a while to do them all.
ReplyDeleteYou're welcome! I'm excited that someone has found something here useful! :)
I love this idea! I actually just went to Michaels today looking for favor tins and they didn't have any so I bought favor boxes but now seeing this I may switch again and use the plastic shot glasses I have left over from my sister's wedding. Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteI love this idea, but we may cheat on it a bit to make it re-usable for next year. Last summer, I bought a 10-pack of small rectangular containers with lids from the dollar store. They would be perfect for this, so hopefully they still carry them. It would avoid having to mess with the glue...you could just number the lids, though admittedly poking your finger through the tissue does sound like fun. I'm thinking that instead of the name, we could place a scripture reading to read together in order to keep the focus on the reason for Advent. My kids brought home the mother lode of Halloween candy this year and still have tons left over, so this is the perfect use for it. They are going to love this...thanks!
ReplyDeleteI am thinking use a box and put the small glasses or whatever object you like to use for the 24/25 spots to count down the use a piece of cardboard to cover those objects and cut openings then seal up the containers with the cardboard lid on the box and just cover the openings with tissue paper so that it could be reused year after year but look forward to making it with my grand daughter thansk for the idea!!
ReplyDeleteI am thinking use a box and put the small glasses or whatever object you like to use for the 24/25 spots to count down the use a piece of cardboard to cover those objects and cut openings then seal up the containers with the cardboard lid on the box and just cover the openings with tissue paper so that it could be reused year after year but look forward to making it with my grand daughter thansk for the idea!!
ReplyDeleteWhat a fun and personal spin on this. My kids would enjoy both creating and decorating this and opening one up every day. Love how you can change it up depending on the celebration. Really cool idea!
ReplyDeleteThank you for this great idea. I will be printing and trying out this project.
ReplyDelete